PROVIDER PERSPECTIVE:
Gwendolyn Stretch
Text Transcript

A middle-aged woman came to me a few weeks ago for a referral to Orthopedics. She had been seen in the emergency room, and was wearing a cast. She has sustained a radial fracture and belonged to an HMO so she needed a referral. In talking to her, I found that she had gone to two emergency rooms. The first ER had placed her in a cast, but gave her nothing for pain, despite her complaint about pain and didn't give her any written instructions. So after going back home and going back to a different emergency room where she was given pain medication and the other ER told her how terrible it was that she was treated that way, she came to me for the referral. I said to her, well maybe they weren't finished with you at the first emergency room. Maybe you left before they were finished. And she said, "But they told me they were - that they were done and that I could go home."

I was appalled and personally because of some experiences that I've had going to an emergency room as a child, being uninsured. I remember one particular incident where I did go for a minor problem. My mother took me. We had no insurance. The physician, I believe it was a physician… but it could have been a medical student said to me, "You don't belong in the ER; you don't have an emergency. The ER is for sick people."

Yes they are, but if you have no place to go and you don't know of a place to go, that's where you go for health care. So one of the things I did do with her is help her draft a letter to the hospital to let them know how she was treated and how she felt because I think one of the things that happens to people that don't have access to care is that they do feel powerless. Her feeling was that she had to go some place else to get the services she was entitled too. I think we do have to empower our patients to demand what they are entitled to.